Chapter 2
CAYCE
Twenty-four candles on a cake I didn’t ask for. Someone stuck a plastic shamrock in the frosting like a joke, and the back room smells like sugar and gun oil.
Tiernan lights the candles with a Zippo, grinning because he loves making a scene at my expense. “Make a wish, boss.”
“I’m not the boss.”
Yet.
I don’t say the last part out loud. I don’t need to. Tiernan’s my little brother. We both know exactly what our father has been training me for.
“Can’t we just forget the birthday part? Skip straight to Halloween?” I shift my weight from foot to foot, uneasy with the attention. I was unlucky enough to be born on All Hallow’s Eve, and I can never get away from some kind of stupid fucking celebration no matter how hard I try to avoid it.
Tonight I tried to disappear into the bar our family owns on the south side of Boston, but the family followed me here with this stupid cake, when all I want is a whiskey and to be left alone. That’s fine, though. I’ll eat a slice, and then I’ll leave, and everyone can fuck off until tomorrow.
Our uncle, Rafferty, stands off to my left, tie loosened, eyes taking inventory without moving. Our sister, Roisin, leans on the doorjamb, arms folded, blocking me from the rest of the crowd and saving me from the kind of hugs and back slaps I can’t stand in small rooms.
I count exits because it’s a habit that my father beat into me. Two. Back door to the alley, front hall to the bar. The window’s painted shut, because of course it is. The old radiator hisses like a warning. I set my back to the wall and let my shoulders drop the inch of relief they’ll give me.
“Speech,” Tiernan says, because he enjoys pain. His turn is coming, and payback’s a bitch. Elephants and Shannons have long fucking memories.
I blow out the candles and watch as the smoke curls and disappears.
“To the boys who made it out of Blackvine Ridge,” I say, lifting the whiskey Roisin pressed into my hand.
The room goes quiet, everyone remembering that…
uncomfortable…time, or, if they hadn’t been here then, their own brand of Blackvine hell. “And to the ones who didn’t.”
We drink. The burn is clean as it flows down my throat. The memories I’m running from? Those don’t budge an inch, regardless of the alcohol I’m using to numb myself.
Grady Calhoun’s laugh lives somewhere behind my ribs where it can’t be touched. He’d have made something out of that plastic shamrock. A card trick. A weapon. A punchline. Something to distract us from the torture we went through every single day.
“Well. That’s enough of that, then.” Roisin claps her hands together, breaking the spell. Lifting the cake knife, she brandishes it and then slices cleanly into the cake. “I don’t know about you, but I’m famished.”
Conversation starts up, a low hum, as she begins passing plates around.
Rafferty clears his throat and edges closer. “Sit-down with Moretti’s people is Friday,” he says, his raspy voice like a gift wrapped in sandpaper. “I need you to be…steady.”
“Steady,” I echo. He means don’t make a mess. Don’t make a scene. He means I’m twenty-four, but he’d prefer me to be forty and boring. He means I need to walk a fine line between bearing the Shannon name with pride and defending against this city that swallows the men who wear it too loudly.
We’re not always welcome here.
Tiernan flips the Zippo closed. “That sounds like loads of fun. How about for tonight,” he offers, easy, “there’s a party at Kavanagh’s we could crash. Or we could do your usual.”
My usual.
I look at the cake. Then at the knife Roisin set next to it. I pick it up. Decide I don’t want any fucking cake.
My hand doesn’t shake when I set the knife back down. “I’m going to church,” I say. “Nobody bothers me for at least an hour.”
Rafferty’s mouth does that almost-smile that never reaches his eyes. “Try not to steal from God, nephew.”
“I don’t steal,” I tell the older man. “I collect what’s owed. Not from the church.”
Roisin bumps my shoulder on her way past, softening the gesture with a hint of a smile.
“I know this look,” she says, twirling her hand.
“You invite chaos in, and then you wait.” And she does know.
She was there when I came back from Colorado with a spine that didn’t bend the same way, and morals that not even a saint could change.
I take another swallow of whiskey and feel the edges line up inside me.
My yearly birthday ritual is simple. I find a saint—someone in costume, naturally, because who would ever want to defile a real saint—representative of holiness and salvation and purity.
A nun, an angel, a Catholic schoolgirl…whatever.
I offer them sin—nothing but a fall from grace and a safe place to transgress.
And in the doing, I prove to myself I can’t be shamed with the weapon they used.
It’s not about purity. It’s about permission.
I start at the church just to remind myself of what I’m doing.
Outside, Southie is already wearing Halloween like a dare to the outside world. My shoes hit the wet pavement as dusk approaches. Around me, kids in capes and masks are cutting across the street while their parents shout from concrete stoops.
I drive slowly down the lane without music, window cracked, the air needle-cold and clean enough to keep me awake. I park three blocks from St. Brigid’s and walk the rest.
Another habit that was cut into my soul. If you can’t walk away fast, don’t go in.
The cathedral breathes around me when I slip through the side door. Old wood greets me with a quiet squeak. Beeswax fills the air, a mix of burning candles and old stone that smells like rain. I stand a minute and let it sink into my soul that this isn’t a barn with a lock on the outside.
I’m free to leave when and how I want.
While my heart rate slows to normal, I take inventory of my surroundings. The front pews are empty. A custodian hums somewhere near the sacristy but out of sight. I mark my goal halfway back. An aisle seat that will put my back to the wall.
I count the panels in the nearest window. Twelve. Again. Twelve.
Finally, I can breathe through the anxiety that’s always present on my birthday.
I let my gaze drift over the sanctuary, the peace of it settling something within me. My eyes catch on someone midway among the pews.
There’s already a saint here.
She’s not dressed like a nun. Not yet. But she’s a saint. I can tell.
Maybe even a real one.
She’s wearing a wool coat over a simple outfit. The kind the students at St. Brigid’s wear. Not too young, though. Maybe a senior, from the look of her.
Dark hair braided like she might need it out of her face for whatever fight comes. She sits like a good daughter and breathes like someone holding up the ceiling with every lungful.
I watch her count the same window I was just riveted on. My gaze narrows. No…she’s not counting the windows or even numbers—she’s counting decisions hidden behind the distance in her eyes.
“Perfection looks heavy,” I hear myself say. I’m surprised to realize it’s not a line. It’s a mirror I’m offering in case she wants to set some of her weight down.
Normally, I wouldn’t bother, but there’s something about her…
This woman… she’s something else.
She doesn’t startle. Points for that. She turns slowly, cutting a stare through the dim light around us like she’s cataloging me for later. It takes me a moment to register her response, so caught up in her presence.
“...praying.”
One of the first genuine smiles I’ve smiled in a while crooks my lips. The fuck you are, I want to say.
I stand and close distance on my terms—one pew back, one pew over. Controlled. If you want a woman to trust you in a room like this, your hands have to be boring until she tells you otherwise.
“Sanctuary,” I tell her. “It means no one is allowed to hurt you in here. You know that, right?” I leave the rest unsaid. Including me. Especially me.
I want her to challenge me.
I want to break this saint and bend her to my will.
She says she reads Latin like that’s supposed to scare me away. It doesn’t. It just makes me want to ask her name and file it under dangerous in the right hands.
She asks if I get tired of being named before I can introduce myself. I do. I say so. I give her the soft lie I use in rooms that don’t deserve the truth. “Casey.”
She gives me “Caterina,” and it lands like the first time you touch a bruise and know it’s going to heal fine.
“That’s a saint’s name,” I say.
A strange look flickers over her face. “Depends on the day.”
“What about tonight?”
“Tonight I’m a girl who has until midnight before reality sucks me back in.”
I laugh softly. “Then we’re pretty much the same. At least for tonight.”
Her phone buzzes again, and after a glance at the screen, she stands. She gives me a quick, nervous smile.
“Seven,” she tells me. “You need to leave by then. Try not to steal anything while I’m gone.”
“I don’t steal,” I say. “I claim.” With deliberate slowness I allow my eyes to drag over the delicate bone structure of her face, then the fine petiteness of her body, like a question and an answer, all at once. “And I wait for what’s mine.”
She hesitates, inhaling sharply, then turns on her heel and leaves in a wash of cold air and cathedral bells.
When she’s gone there’s nothing to hold me in the present. My hands remember the shape of rope on skin. My chest remembers the weight of a dark, square room with no windows. I open my fingers and count to eight until none of it is here anymore.
It’s Tiernan’s text that drags me from the encroaching memories.
Tiernan: You alive, birthday boy?
Cayce: Still at church. Behaving terribly.
A beat. Then his answer comes.
Tiernan: Need company?
Cayce: No.
I look at the confessional. Mark the old wood and aged brass sign. The tiny grill where a voice becomes a vibration against your skin while you ask forgiveness for your sins.
Cayce: Just time.
Restless, I walk the perimeter of the sanctuary once, because I’m me. Check the side doors, the sacristy corridor, the little alarm box where the red light blinks steady.
People think churches are soft places, places of sanctuary and freedom. They’re not. They’re made of rules and locked cabinets and centuries of practice saying we keep what comes here safe.
Blackvine Ridge taught me what doors do when men hold the keys. I learned to hate locks. I also learned that a rule you choose can be a rail you don’t fall over.
Seven is a line on the clock and a hook in my chest. I sit in the confessional with the door open and my hands empty, because those are the only terms that mean anything.
I’m not sure how I’ll maneuver it, but I’ve chosen the saint I need to soothe my soul. Now I wait for the woman I’ve already somehow claimed as mine.
For the night, anyway.